Steam Next Fest is well and truly underway at the moment, and if you know where to look, it is absolutely packed with exciting games that are set to release sometime in the (near) future. However, finding them isn’t always as easy as just sorting the demos by popularity: there are gems to be found throughout the entire list of Next Fest offerings, and we’re here to help you find them. Jason set us up perfectly with the initial list of demos he posted on Monday, and here are another ten demos to get you through the week!
All Will Rise
What happens when a huge corporation damn near kills an entire river and its ecosystem? This is what happens in All Will Rise, the debut game by Speculative Agency, and their answer is: you take the culprits to court! You and your team set out to uncover the truth of what happened and, more importantly, gather arguments to convince a judge of the complicity of the corporation.
It’s all presented as a narrative deckbuilding game, where your deck consists of the arguments you gather throughout your investigation. Manage your team to gather the best info, get the affected people on your side, and make the culprits pay for what they’ve done. With a three-hour demo, you’ll have plenty of time to snoop around and have plenty of conversations, and when you’re done, there’s a Kickstarter still active right now that you can support!
Bag of Dreams
Another deckbuilder now, and it’s a roguelike one this time around. In Bag of Dreams by Two Trick Pony, you have to create dreams in order to fulfil a win state, which can be different every time you play. You do this by choosing cards from your bag to place onto an ever-increasing grid. But beware, as there are terrors within your deck as well, which can turn even your best dreams into nightmares.
With the help of cute little creatures, you set out to create the best dreams while trying to manage these terrors. The longer you take to reach your win state, the more difficult the game will become, as you try to balance your deck, the available roster spaces and the amount of terrors that get added after your dreams. It’s a fun, cosy and cute take on the deckbuilding genre that offers something a little lighter than the usual games in the genre.
The Witch’s Bakery
The Witch’s Bakery explores what would happen if witches were just a thing within the modern world, and one of them opens her own bakery in Paris. During the day, you manage the store, kneading the dough needed for your familiar to bake into all kinds of goodies, and serving customers. At nighttime, you get to explore everything the city has to offer.
While the store management part of the game alone would be enough to sell me on this one, there’s another element in play: your pastries can affect people’s emotions. So you set out to help people by baking what they need, creating a heartwarming story that’s sure to pull on your heartstrings.
Wax Heads
Have you ever wanted to work in a record store? I mean, who hasn’t? Wax Heads lets you live out that fantasy, recommending records to customers, creating flyers and just allowing yourself to get swallowed into the local music scene. The game offers a completely original lineup of bands and artists, all with their own histories and discographies, which are all really, really cool.
And no one has more history within the business than your own employer, Morgan McIntyre, who used to be in one of the biggest bands in the world until she fell out with her bandmate and sister (although no one really knows what happened). With her sister back in town, there sure is more drama to come for Morgan and perhaps even the entire team at Repeater Records…
inKONBINI
It might seem weird that someone who works a retail job enjoys multiple games about working at a store, but I assure you, I really do. inKONBINI is another beautiful experience to add to the genre. Working at your aunt’s small convenience store before you set off for college, you get to restock shelves, help customers, and just get in touch with the people who visit your store.
There’s a kind of relaxing feel to the rhythm of working the shop, making sure everything is in its right place and available for the customers to find without any problems. You might just get those same customers to open up a bit about themselves and their lives and maybe even share a moment or two.
Randel’s Quest
LCB Game Studio are known for their pixel pulp games, these short horror visual novels that are all about recreating the stories from pulp magazines back in the day. But with Randel’s Quest, they have gone in a completely different direction, which somewhat surprised me. The basic premise of the game comes down to Wordle but as a roguelike, and my goodness, does it work?
There are still some balancing issues that need sorting out, as the slot machine that decides the effects of your letters can be absolutely brutal at times, but the game certainly has its hooks in me. The way the slot machine works is that there are three effects: one for letters in a correct position, one for letters in an incorrect position, and one for letters that don’t feature in the word you’re looking for. This has high Balatro energy, and I keep coming back to the demo for more.
Find Your Words
Another developer going in a completely different direction than before is Grindstone creator Capybara Games. Their latest title, Find Your Words, sees you play as a child setting off for summer camp. But there’s a catch: you are non-verbal. Luckily, the camp leader understands this and offers you a binder with stickers you can use to communicate with the other children.
By communicating with others and playing with them, you collect more and more stickers, making you able to articulate more and more. As the game is made by two dads who themselves have a kid who’s non-verbal, this one really opened my eyes to something I had little awareness of and just how essential any way of communicating can be.
Vampire Crawlers
Yup, another deckbuilder, but there was literally no way I wasn’t going to play the new Poncle game, was there? Yes, this is by the same developers who created Vampire Survivors, and it’s pretty obvious too. Vampire Crawlers switches perspective to first person, though, as you walk around the same areas and fight the same enemies as in that genre-defining original. But now, you gather cards to battle everyone.
You’d think that would bring the pace down from Vampire Survivors, but that’s not the case here. You still collect gems to level up and get upgrades whenever you do. You are still looking for all the ways in which you can break the game and just demolish entire leagues of enemies with one strike, and you do so at a frenetic pace. It’s just a blast to play and proves that Poncle knows perfectly how to create the most addicting gaming experiences.
Into the Slimy Mines
Ant Workshop Ltd’s previous game, Into the Restless Ruins, is criminally underrated, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the developer is back with another game, Into the Slimy Mines. This time around, you play as the dwarven crew of a spaceship that has gotten badly damaged. During the fallout of the crash, the crew was blasted off onto a nearby moon, where you are now stuck.
It’s up to you to collect all of your crewmates, all the while mining for goods that will help you build better equipment to do so. Enemies will spawn in waves, so you have to set up to be sure you’re able to tackle them so they don’t destroy all of your equipment, making you unable to escape. It’s another highly addictive take on tower defence with a card twist, and I hope this one will get the appreciation it deserves.
Greenhearth Necromancer
In Greenhearth Necromancer, you are the titular necromancer who has been left their grandmother’s apartment and the plants that come with it. Except that all of these plants are now dead! It’s up to you to restore this balcony garden to its former glory, using the tips and tricks your grandmother was known for, mixed with your own necromancy magic.
You also get to meet the neighbours and might try to build up a social life by caring for their plants and having conversations with them. This semi-idle game is perfect to play for a while and then have it running in the background while you’re working away on your PC, and it’s an absolute joy. Coming from the people who made the fantastic Glitchhikers, that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
There you have it, ten more demos to check out during this February edition of Next Fest. And no worries if you still haven’t found the games you’re looking for: we still have more coverage to come! So keep your eyes on the site in the coming days for more Steam Next Fest goodness.
